Re: Proposal to deploy GitLab on gnome.org

[Mattias Bengtsson <mattias jc bengtsson gmail com>]

Hi Pat!

On Tue, 2017-05-16 at 10:41 -0400, Pat Suwalski wrote:
> I only lurk here, so I don't often offer an opinion, but I do
> maintain the GitLab install at my medium-sized company.

I do the same, but our experiences seems to be pretty different.

> My problem with GitLab is how fluid it is. The underlying
> technologies keep changing, and it's a real pain staying up to date.
> If you get behind at all with the updates, it's quite a chore to
> upgrade, and half way through you find out you need a new Ruby, need
> to upgrade through a couple of packaging systems for node, and
> really, you should just upgrade to Debian unstable (that last one is
> a bit of an exaggeration). 
> Expect a new user interface experience every four months.
> That's not to say that it's fragile. It's been rock-solid for us.

How did you install GitLab? We use the omnibus RPM package for CentOS
and have had no dependency problems while upgrading from some 7.x
release all the way to 9.1.x over the last few years. A lot come
bundled in the omnibus package and the rest gets installed from the
host operating system repositories.

Could it be that Debian stable is just very old? 

> It's just hard to recommend something you can't predict, running 
> ever-changing technologies that no sysadmin can comfortably stay on
> top of.

Since everything has been working super smooth for us I can't say that
I agree (not implying that the pain you've experienced isn't real of
course).

Regards,
Mattias